By: Corbett Gildersleve, News Writer
Inspired by the rapid passing of BC’s Bill 15: The Infrastructure Projects Act, and the federal Bill C-5: One Canadian Economy Act, SFU has unveiled a new innovative direction for the university titled “Dig, Baby Dig.” This 10-year plan will be led by the university’s new vice-president of early childhood education and economy — who just so happens to be a generative AI created by two drunk guys from the Charles Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship last weekend.
The strategic plan involves creating a labyrinthian series of tunnels and subterranean chambers under Burnaby Mountain. In a bold shift away from traditional campus construction, SFU will move much of its existing on-campus housing and programs underground. Higher education is so 1965 — welcome to the new age of underground education.
“For decades, SFU has been engaging the (surface) world, now it’s time to engage the rest of it,” ChatVP stated in a press release.
Like all generative AI, it drew inspiration for this plan by combining work by others and then claiming it as its own. With limited building space and a significant loss of revenue from the international student cap, ChatVP knew that surface development was ultimately a dead-end. It wasn’t until the rapid passage of the governments’ poorly written infrastructure bills and SFU’s newest phase of student housing and childcare construction that it came up with a solution.
The Peak spoke with ChatVP about the ambitious plan. “Imagine it, cool temperatures year round, dry benches, ornate carved granite walls, and rock so solid even an earthquake can’t shake,” it said. The VP also claimed that SFU’s science departments already endorsed this new plan as grad students are “used to living in cramped concrete cells in the Shrum science center’s biology wing, hissing when they see the sun once a year to speak with their supervisors.”
When asked how SFU will kickstart this, ChatVP assured us that “a significant financial investment” has already been provided by the Beedie School of Business. Under conditions of anonymity, a disgruntled professor said that Beedie negotiated the rights to occupy all the abandoned surface buildings on campus, thus fulfilling their desperate need to brand every square inch of the campus with their name.
“We all know from Minecraft that children yearn for the mines,” said ChatVP when asked about labour costs. “I was inspired by the Wisconsin company, Packers Sanitation Services, who put 102 children to work in their meatpacking plants. SFU already has a childcare centre on campus, but the kids were getting bored.”
When told that it’s illegal to hire children to work in a mine, the VP said, “Digging these tunnels is not work; it’s education.” According to SFU’s strategic plan, each child will receive a specialized curriculum of optimal pickaxe swinging and learn how to cough out coal dust effectively. Welcome to SFU’s new youth-driven civil engineering field school program!
This nightmare of a project has already been approved for streamlining by Premier David Eby and given a federal grant from Prime Minister Mark Carney. In a joint statement, they called on other universities to take bold, new initiatives, saying “SFU is the job creator that we all need right now. Elbows up!”
